Individuals often communicate or exchange information electronically, for example, using electronic mail (email), instant messaging (IM), forums, blogs, social networking sites, and text messaging. These types of electronic communication make it easy to transmit information and content between individuals and among groups.
As individuals communicate via electronic media more frequently, it becomes increasingly difficult to track the source(s) and destination(s) of the content that is communicated. In particular, it becomes difficult for a user to remember who sent the content to them initially, and to whom they have forwarded the content. Also, for content that originates with the user, it becomes difficult to remember whether or not certain content has been sent to another individual.
The difficulty in tracking content sources and destinations can have detrimental effects on the user. Congestion is one potential disadvantage to not tracking from whom content is received and to whom content is sent. In particular, the inability to effectively track such content can result in various copies of the content residing in different places among one or more communication clients. These extra copies make it more cumbersome to search through communications because the copies increase the number of items that are sorted during a search.
Additionally, potential embarrassment is another disadvantage to not tracking the source and destination of content. For example, when the source of specific content is unknown, or not tracked, it is possible for a user to send the content back to the original sender, without realizing that the content is not new to the original sender. In this example, the user may be embarrassed to learn that the user sent the content back to the person from whom the content was initially received. As another example, a user may repeatedly send the same content to a recipient, without realizing that the user has sent the same content to the same recipient already. In this example, the user may be embarrassed to learn that the user has repeatedly sent the same content to the same recipient over and over.